:>In alt.uk.law Paul Smith writted:
:>: it :>: should be completely obvious that most cases of speeding do not result :>: in any kind of danger. Even when motorists "interact dangerously" with :>: child pedestrians the vast majority of outcomes are benign.
:> Unutterably stupid argument. :> It should also be obvious that, just as the vast majority of drink-driving :>cases result from benign events, this has no bearing on the fact that it :>is a dangerous activity that increases the risk to oneself and others.
: You just don't get it do you?
If motorists interact dangerously with pedestrians, of course many pedestrians will be lucky - primarily because the burden of caution is thrust onto them, rather than with the driver where it belongs. The point is that some will not, and where they do not, the results are catastrophic. Your paragraph above implies that near-misses are acceptable. They are not acceptable, IMHO, because they will not always result in a miss. Aircraft near-misses are viewed with extreme seriousness for the same reason.
: You think speed relative to the speed : limit is a measure of danger.
You are setting up a straw man. I have not said that, and you know it.
Let me make this as clearly as I can:
Speed relative to the risk is obviously the important criterion. I have not disputed that. This is why it is frequently safer to travel slower than the speed limit. I do not take issue with that, I take issue with your dismissive attitude to speed limits.
I contend that on a given road, a professional person has made a judgement about the speed limit that should be based on knowledge of the roads, risk factors, pedestrian and cyclist behaviour. The ordinary driver is not equipped to make the same judgement as they do not have access to the same data. [There may well be serious failings in that system that lead to limits that are arguably too low, but those failings must be addressed via the speed limit decision-making process, not in the field by non-compliance, or the result is an extremely dangerous form of lawlesness.] Given their general ignorance of the wider picture, then, drivers have speed limits imposed on them. As there is no objective means for dinstinguishing between between the drivers who know the road well and drive safely, and those that do not, there is no legal distinction that can be made between drivers either. Hence, the speed limits must be applied to all, without prejudice, or not at all.
The question then has to be whether we impose those limits or not. I maintain that, as there is a safety issue involved that impacts upon life and limb, they should be imposed, just as health and safety at work legislation is imposed. A driver who knows the road well may be able to drive within their limits at 40mph in a 30mph zone, where a driver who is new to that stretch of road may not. As I said, we must apply the limits without prejudice, so if either driver travels above the limit, an offence is committed, and punishment applied accordingly.
You appear to be arguing that it is necessary, even desirable, to travel above the speed limit. You are also arguing that you can correctly judge when your speed above the limit is safe. My contention is that, even if this latter point holds true in some cases - maybe even yours - there is a sizeable minority, possibly the majority, of drivers who do not have this ability, and certainly do not have the ability on roads that they are not familiar with. So, the speed limits are enforced to protect the all of the public from that proportion of drivers.
That is the point. It doesn't matter how good I am as a driver, or how good you are. There are people on the roads who have poor judgement. If they do so at an excessive speed, they multiply the risk to others, and the rest of us have a right to be protected from them, or at least to minimise the risk from them. The only objective measure we have of excessive speed is the speed limit. If you are a good driver, then there is no reason for you to be unable to keep within the limit.
: Anyway, faster roads are safer - it's not the speed in mph that brings : the danger. It's the risk of collision in the first place.
Again, you are comparing chalk and cheese, and appear to be looking at this only from the driver's perspective. Faster roads are safer because they are structured in a very different way, with barriers to prevent head-on collisions and interactions with pedestrians or cyclists (motorways and dual carriageways), or pass through areas with lower risk of interactions with pedestrians. Slower roads, almost by definition, exist where there is a high density of non-drivers.
'Faster roads are safer' - Are you seriously arguing the case that it is the speed that makes it safe, and no other factors are involved? If the 30mph speed limit through a small town is upped to 70mph, would the casualty rate decrease? If not, does this not indicate that maybe there are good reasons for speed limits?
: If you travel fast where there's a risk of collision, that's : dangerous. But never make the mistake of thinking that collisions : materialise out of thin air and at random. They don't. Usually there's : a series of mistakes by multiple drivers before there's a collision.
Another straw man. No-one's disputing that. The fact is that when those events occur, higher speeds dramatically reduce the available response time for the avoidance of collisions, and result in greater damage when those collisions do occur.
: Tell me, what percentage of accidents do you think are caused by : speeding?
What I *think* is irrelevant. The DoT, the AA, and parliamentary review committees put the figure at over 1000 deaths per annum resulting from accidents where excessive speed was the primary causal factor - not the only factor, but the primary one. If only a tenth of those deaths involve speeds that could have been avoided by keeping within the speed limit, then that's 100 deaths too many. You may think that's an acceptable price to pay for you to reach your meeting on time or to retain your libertarian ideals, but I'm afraid that I do not.
ATB, Gavin